My wife continues to show who has the writing talent in my family.
I’m pretty sure I won’t try scuba diving. I love the sea, the water, the sand, and everything that goes with it but I’m pretty, pretty, pretty sure I won’t actually do it. Anything that involves holding my breath or going so deep beneath the water’s surface that I’m dependent on a tank of oxygen on my back makes me anxious. I’d rather jump out of a plane thousands of feet in the air, climb Mount Everest, or ride the most daring roller coaster ever built. I won’t say, “never”, but I’m pretty darn sure. Never, never, never… never say never. I can easily tell you a few things I never thought I’d do or experience. I never thought I’d have a tube coming out of my nose. I never thought I’d experience a sponge bath. I never thought I’d have to inject myself with a shot everyday. I never thought I’d lose my uterus and ovaries….
Read the rest.
And donate blood!
About the Author
An Aussie immigrant to Israel, Aussie Dave is founder of Israellycool, happy family man, and lover of Australian sports and girlie drinks
Filed Under: Aussie Dave
Tags: cancer
I tried, 2 years ago, shortly after I made Aliyah. I can’t donate blood because I lived for more than 6 months in the UK.
WOW refuah shelama & Shabat shalom
I don’t know about Israel, but in the United States, you cannot give blood if you are a gay man who has ever had sex with another man since 1977. There is some movement to try and change this decades-old policy, but it’s still the law of the land.
I think it’s an international thing, except the living in UK if you are in UK, I guess, I don’t see them changing the rules, unless the tests improve to 100%. It’s not just gay men, also sex workers, if you recently had tattoo, injecting drug users, those who lived in UK between 1980 and 1996, heart condition, immunosuppressant meds etc. the tests are not 100% ( but close), and if you engaged in high risk activity in last 6 months, and contracted HIV or hepatitis, you could still be in “seroconversion window” – ie not seroconverted yet.
I just checked. There is a separate section which allows donations but not transfusions (if I translated correctly). One is living in the UK between 1980 – 1996. Another is intra-male relations since 1977. I think the US also takes the blood, but they say they use it for research. There’s a bunch of stuff; the paragraph actually ends in “etc.”.
Course, I generally get turned down simply because I’m feeling under the weather. There are also age limitations.
I refuse to give blood until it is legal to be paid for it. I get lightheaded from shots. I nearly faint when 3 vials are taken. I can only imagine what half a litre would entail. My altruism and $50 would get that half litre, but theres simply not a chance in heck that I am just undergoing torture.
Incidentally, legalizing blood sales would eliminate the shortages of blood worldwide and drive costs down significantly.
I know it’s been awhile, but I remember back in the early ’70′s a chain called the “Beverly Blood Banks” situated in run-down neighborhoods in the Chicago area and near military bases who paid for blood donations. Their clientele tended to be alchocolics, drug addicts and military personnel, but this was before AIDS so no one seemed to care where the blood was coming from back then.
Yes, it was always a problem. So now the US gets from generous Swedes and so on.
Legalizing blood sales would also increase the number of people who are at risk of having a transmissible disease lying and donating, also, people world wide putting their own health at risk by donating too often etc.
I’m surprised you are allowed to. My problem is that I’m often not feeling well, so I get turned down.